Chapter fifty
Riven
Istopped taking my meds nine days ago. Shane noticed on day two.
Didn’t say anything at first. Just watched me carefully the way people watch ticking bombs in movies right before everything explodes.
By day four, he started forcing food into my hands every few hours because apparently psych meds and starvation don’t mix well.
Day six, he physically pinned me against the kitchen counter at the clubhouse and shoved the pills down my throat himself while Skylar screamed at both of us to stop acting fucking insane.
I threw up ten minutes later. Didn’t matter, he made me take them again.
Now it was day twenty-two, and I was sitting on the floor beside Nadia’s hospital bed with dried blood still under my fingernails because I kept ripping my cuticles apart without realizing it.
The room smelled wrong. It was too clean, too sterile.
Nadia hated hospitals, hated being vulnerable even more.
And now machines were breathing for her sometimes.
The irony would’ve been funny if it didn’t make me want to split my skull open against the wall.
I stared at her chest rising and falling beneath the blanket.
Still there. Good. My brain kept checking.
Still breathing, check. Still alive, check.
Still here, check. Over and over and over again until I thought I might actually lose my fucking mind.
Because every single time I closed my eyes, I saw her body hitting the pavement again. The sound haunted me most.
Not the crash. Not the screaming. It was her body hitting the road.
Like something fragile breaking. I rubbed aggressively at my face.
Didn’t help. Nothing fucking helped anymore.
The chair beside me scraped loudly across the floor.
Shane dropped into it with a bag of vending machine chips and a bottle of water before looking me over once.
“You look psychotic.”
“I am psychotic.”
“Fair.” He tossed the chips at me. I let them hit my chest and fall onto the floor.
“Eat.”
“No.”
“Riv-”
“No.” He paused.
“You skipped again.” I looked at him slowly, dangerously.
“Don’t start.”
“You think I can’t tell?” Shane leaned forward, elbows on his knees.
“You haven’t slept in three days.”
“That’s not true.” “You stared at the IV machine for forty minutes yesterday because you thought the beeping sounded different.”
…Okay maybe that happened. I looked back toward Nadia instead. She was still breathing. Good. Shane followed my line of sight.
“She’s not dying tonight.” My jaw clenched so hard that pain shot through it.
“You don’t know that.”
“I know the doctors said she’s stable.”
“Doctors are fucking stupid.”
“Riven.”
“People said she’d survive the crash too and look how that turned out.” The words came out sharper than intended. Shane exhaled slowly through his nose.
“You’re spiraling again.” I laughed humorlessly.
“Again?”
That was the problem with borderline personality disorder: nobody romanticized it properly.
People talked about mood swings. Anger. Obsession.
Nobody talked about this part. The hollowing.
The feeling that your skin doesn’t fit right anymore.
That your emotions are eating through your organs like acid.
That every person you love is seconds away from abandoning you permanently, and you’ll destroy yourself trying to stop it. Or worse, the numbness afterward.
Alexithymia made it even more fucked. Because sometimes I couldn’t even identify what I was feeling anymore. Everything blurred together into static and violence and panic until I physically acted it.
out just to understand it. That’s why I fought.
Why I raced. Why I bled. Pain was easier to identify than emotions.
And right now? Right now I couldn’t tell if I wanted to punch something, throw up, scream, or crawl into Nadia’s hospital bed beside her and stop existing entirely.
Maybe all four. Shane stood up suddenly.
“Take your meds.”
“No.”
“I’m not arguing with you today.”
“Then don’t.” He stared at me for a long moment. Then reached into his hoodie pocket and tossed the orange prescription bottle directly into my lap. The rattling sound made my stomach twist.
“You know what happens when you stop cold turkey.” Yeah, I did.
The last time ended with me sitting in the middle of the church bell tower at three in the morning holding a knife against my own throat trying to figure out if I actually wanted to die or if I just wanted somebody to stop me.
Roxy found me first. Funny fucking coincidence. I picked up the bottle slowly. Turned it over in my hands, then set it on the bedside table untouched. Shane looked exhausted suddenly.
“You know she’d beat the shit out of you for this.” That almost got a smile out of me. Almost.
“She’d call me dramatic first.”
“She’d be right.” I looked at Nadia again.
Messy dark hair spread across the pillow. Bruises fading yellow along her throat and collarbone. Lips slightly parted. Too still. Everything about her felt too still. I suddenly stood up so fast the chair nearly toppled backward.
“I need air.” Shane moved immediately.
“Riven-”
“I said I need fucking air.”
The words echoed louder than intended through the hospital room. Nadia didn’t move. Of course she didn’t. The realization made something ugly twist inside my chest. Shane watched me carefully, then nodded once.
“Five minutes.” I left anyway.
The hospital hallways were dark this late at night.
Quiet except for distant monitors and soft footsteps from exhausted nurses working overnight shifts.
I hated this place. Too many memories. Too much loss.
I walked until I ended up outside near the ambulance bay with a cigarette between my fingers I didn’t even remember lighting.
Rain poured steadily from the sky. Good. Maybe it’d drown my head out.
Didn’t work. Nothing did. My phone buzzed in my pocket. I ignored it. Buzzed again. Then again. Finally I checked it just to make it stop. Deck. I almost declined before answering.
“What?”
“We got another problem.” Of fucking course we did. I leaned against the wall, cigarette smoke mixing with rain.
“What now?”
“One of the old Kingsmen runners got picked up tonight.” I frowned.
“So?”
“He was carrying Olympus shipment schedules.” Every muscle in my body tightened instantly.
“Where is he?”
“Clubhouse basement.” I looked back toward the hospital windows upstairs. Toward Nadia, still breathing. Hopefully.
“You questioning him?”
“Tried.” Deck’s voice darkened.
“He keeps asking for Hades.” The name sent immediate ice through my veins. Not because we knew who Hades was; we didn’t. Not yet. But every trail somehow led back there. Like a ghost standing behind everything.
“What’d he say?”
“Not much. Just keeps saying the restructuring already started.” My stomach twisted. Restructuring. The old gods bringing in heirs. Olympus rebuilding itself. I crushed the cigarette beneath my shoe.
“I’m coming.”
“Riven-”
“I’m coming.” I hung up immediately.
Then stood there in the rain staring at the hospital windows. I should stay, I knew that. The rational part of my brain understood leaving Nadia.
right now was insane. But another part of me- the uglier part- needed movement. Needed violence. Needed answers. Needed something besides sitting beside her bed waiting to lose my fucking mind completely. I started toward my car.
Then stopped halfway there. Because suddenly I couldn’t breathe. This wasn’t panic. This was something worse. The overwhelming certainty that if I left this hospital tonight, something terrible would happen. My heartbeat started hammering violently.
Go back upstairs.
Leave.
Stay.
Go.
The thoughts crashed into each other so fast it physically hurt.
I grabbed fistfuls of my hair, trying to steady myself.
Jesus fucking Christ, I was losing it. Actually losing it.
And the worst part? Nadia would know exactly how bad it’d gotten the second she looked at me.
If she woke up. The thought hit like a knife between the ribs.
If
I doubled over suddenly, nausea twisting hard through my stomach.
Not now , not here. I forced myself upright again, breathing unevenly.
Then looked back at her hospital window one last time before getting in the car anyway.
Because if Olympus thought putting Nadia Slade into a coma would make Stonebridge easier to control? They were about to
learn exactly how dangerous grief could make a man like me.